


The Flame's Shadow

by flaubertienne



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-06
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-03-14 14:25:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13591983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flaubertienne/pseuds/flaubertienne
Summary: A flame cannot cast a shadow unless there is a brighter source of light behind it.





	1. the flame's shadow

_‘For he doth make my veins and pulses tremble.’_

For the longest time that I could remember, I had been a lonely child. Despite growing up with a school of boisterous adoptive brothers and sisters I had grown accustomed to wandering alone in the hallways of our Queens apartment at night, with a candle in hand, wandering and waiting for something to just pick me up and steal me away. My world, as I’d perceive it, was always rinsed with sepia- ugly, muted, dirty. Things in my life barely interested me. Ma and her teachings were starting to border on the uncanny, and I yearned for the day where I could just…

There was an ember within me that would not sleep, a restless glow that threatened to consume me with every breath I take. And as much as I tried to ignore it, it ate and ate at my flesh like wringing maggots on a rotten, pitted fruit, and I was left but a hollow deep within me.

The first time I laid eyes on you, it was the morning rush hour and I had been accompanying Ma to distribute flyers. In the sea of thousand uncaring faces, yours was a beacon of light, standing out in the wash of muted grey and brown with your sweeping black coat and swept hair. You were hanging around the front doors to a stately building, your eyes cast skywards, as if the thing you were waiting for would drop out of the sky and into your hands.

I must have been staring at you for too long, because you noticed, turning away carelessly to glance in my direction, and then I had looked away, like a child caught with their hand in the cookie jar. A searing hot blush rose up high into my cheekbones and ears, and I fumbled with the flyers in my hands. Beside me, Ma was busy yelling rhetoric to whoever would listen, while I contend with the twist of longing ache that tossed violently in the centre of my chest.

When I finally looked up, and saw that you that you had gone, I noticed how, for the first time in a very long while, the world was a vibrant and as vivid as it has always been. Never had the sound of cars and music been so loud and whirring with life, and even in Ma’s ugly, outdated dress I could see the patterns that lived and breathed as I finally did.

 

_‘A mighty flame follows a tiny spark.’_

You found out where I lived even though we had only ever met through that one chance encounter. It started out as innocuous lingering outside the apartment, you gliding gracefully along the cobblestone with your hands in your pockets, occasionally ducking into a corner for a cigarette. I tried so hard not to stare at your shadow when Ma brought me out for another day of handing out flyers, and you seemed to thrive on my longing, dancing between invisibility and starkness when I turned my back from you.

Then came the conversations- you only spoke to me when you were certain that Ma was well out of earshot, for you had seen the purple flowers on my wrist and neck and knew what she was capable of. I learnt your name, Percival- whispered low and silkily into my ear. I told you mine- one of those old Puritan virtue names, nothing special, but my heart raced, and my blood sang when you repeated it back to me, the two syllables like flutes of honey falling from your generous mouth.

You scouted me whenever you could- usually in alleys and corner stores that would not raise suspicion- and asked me about my day. Handing flyers again? Yes, of course. How are your siblings? The same, the same. And you mother? Insane. You had a way with your words, such that even the most mundane of exchanges were filled with curiosity and care, and I clung onto every word of yours like a pilgrim searching for some form of truth and gospel.

You asked me about my feelings, and I confided, often with a tear or two, perhaps more if Ma had been particularly cruel that day, and you listened. Nodding quietly, thoughtfully, in a way that no one else had ever done for me. You asked if I had ever felt that I was worth something more.

Then you brandished a wand, _your_ wand, and showed me, with a flick of your wrist, a burst of sparks so blindingly beautiful that I was sure I’ll never be able to see it again, reproduced in any painting or scenery. But you did it again, and again, each blinding arc of light after another, until I had to blink them out of my eyes, so I could see your sculpted face again.

This is what you could be, you told me, resting a hand on my shoulder. My eyes were still on your wand, now hidden by the folds of your cloak. If you help me, I can help you become what I am, you promised, pressing a kiss to my cheek. The spark inside my heart burst into an untamed inferno, licking away at every shred of inhibition I had, and I turned my head to face yours fully, before leaning in to meet your full lips.

 

_‘The devil is not as black as he is painted.’_

With each encounter you became bolder and bolder, until I was suspecting that you were not the same man as I had once meet anymore. There was a darkness in your inky eyes that was not there when I first met you, and even the smile that you bestowed, once dripping with fondness and sympathy, was now hollow and empty. Where there was a candle now stood a penumbra, a man swallowed so nearly by darkness except for those darned, superficial edges. And it was those darned superficial edges that I clung onto, waiting, hoping, desperately to see the man that once held me and murmured honeyed words into my ear.

And then one day you showed up after a particularly long day with Ma in a dark alley. I remembered little of our domestic scuffle, except that it ended with more bruises down my back and a new set of scratches on my hands. With a soft hush, you healed them quickly, brushing your thumb across the pad of my palm. You reached into your pocket and fished out a necklace with an odd pendant. It was for me, you said. You wanted for me to have this, and you would trust very few with it. Once the entire ordeal was over, you would come for me, and then I’ll finally be rid of this wretched place, of Ma’s wretched grasp and stinging slaps and burning cuffs. The rest of your words were white noise as I looked down on the pendant. It was warm, as it rested in the dip of your chest prior. But it was also heavy, as it hung down from the slopes of my shoulder like the stone of Sisyphus, threatening to crush me into pieces, scattering me into the wind.

_Fin._


	2. purged by fire

_A flame haunted by his shadow._

Strange, wasn’t it? How a single touch could burn one to the core, until nothing was left but a deep imprint on one’s skin- the wisping, lingering ghost of what once was.

I returned to New York under unfortunate circumstances- initially, I had planned to shun the city forever, to stow away the memories of those darned alleys and subways out of my mind, but the good Lord works in mysterious ways, and I was halfway into Brooklyn before I could catch myself. For months, I counted the homeless and the begging as my brethren, and I shared scraps of food and water and cloth with whomever was willing- the old house, Ma’s house, had been utterly destroyed to mere brick and mortar, and there was not dwelling, no shelter that I could seek refuge in.

Perhaps the Lord had wished for me to start afresh as a butterfly emerging out of a chrysalis might, and I did try to forget for the first few days when I was there, giving myself a new name amongst my newfound companions, but returning to New York meant reopening a can of worms that I had not intend. They twisted, coiled and attached themselves to the most intimate corners of my mind, and called to the fore memories that I thought I had long since suppressed. They bubbled and over-spilled into my dreams as unfathomable shapes and figures that jolted me awake to beads of cold sweat on my forehead.

I started seeing things- or at least, I believed I was seeing things. You standing in the corner store with a cigarette in your hand, waiting for an afternoon shower to pass. You disappearing into the suffocating crowd of commuters during the peak hour. You sitting on the bench in Central Park with a newspaper in your lap. The edges of your coat disappearing around the corner before I could do a double take. The shape of your hair imposed on another person’s head, bobbing elegantly into a distant building. Your eyes on a young woman’s face. Your cupid’s bow on another man’s lips. The dark musk of your cologne greeting me when I entered a store, only to dissolve into a wisp when I tried to locate its owner.

Everywhere I went, everywhere I did not go, I could see you, feel you, breathe you, but all it took was for me to turn around, for me to want to catch a second glance, for me to chase after an elusive scent, and you would slip out from between my grasp like a curtain of fog.

  


_A gentleman of two faces._

You returned on a Saturday evening, as the heavens wept and cried in choruses of thunder. I was seeking shelter under the slanted rooftops of a shuttered bookstore, blinking away the rain that had gotten into my eyes. At first glance, I had mistook your silhouette for a stranger’s, one of them Wall Street lotharios with their fantastic, swinging coats and perky umbrellas, but then you appeared suddenly before me like a mirage to a lost man. I was skeptical at your reappearance at first, thinking it was perhaps one of those fever dreams I had been afflicted of late. Or perhaps it was fate, a thread tying us together by our fingers.

But I knew that not even Clotho could have spun from her spindle a face so fair, a touch so warm, and a gaze so fond. It was so familiar, that it reignited the flame that burned within me- but instead of warming up the cold, dead muscle that nestled between my ribs, it had stung, licking at the gaping, bleeding wound right across it. Your face- the last time I had gazed upon it, you took with you everything I had to give you. My heart. My affections. My soul. My self. Much as I thrilled to see you again, to study once more the angles of your jaw, the curves of your lips, I could only see _him_ and him only in the shadows and lines of your face. Taunting me. Mocking me. So I did the one thing I did best: I fled.  
  
You followed me into the alley- funny, it could have been the same alley where you gave me that accursed necklace- and immediately tried to console me, to explain No, it wasn’t me, it was a curse, a spell. Your hands were reaching out to touch me, to find its homely place on my neck and shoulders, but I shunned your every attempt at contact. With every step you took towards me, I retreated two steps back, like some bizarre waltz that we were both entangled with. Your eyes searched for mine, but I planted them firmly onto the ground, where I knew I would be safe from falling into their dark, enthralling depths.  
  


We stood there in silence for a very long time before you spoke up again- this time, your voice wasn’t insistent. It was calm and steady, and you told me only one thing: I’m sorry.

 

_The third time’s a…?_

You were a Byzantine maze that I could not escaped from. No matter where I turned, where I hid, you always had a way to find me. Perhaps it was that gift that you had, or perhaps I was just that predictable. Or perhaps despite my retreating footsteps, I’d secretly hope for you to find me, so I could know that you still cared. And even when I did try to run away from you, I would be haunted by your face that was seared into my mind, residing in my peripheral vision unless I faced you fully.

A part of me yearned to touch you, to hold you as you once held me, but I was too ashamed, too frightened, of what had happened in the past. I can’t-

Look at me, you said softly.

I looked up and into your eyes, and found that you had been studying my hands. I had scratched them a few weeks ago rummaging through the metal heap at the outskirts of the city, and you held them up tenderly. This time, I did not shrink back into my shell, and you healed them with a soft murmur before placing your lips on them. You did this before, on that very fateful day, when you were not you but were him instead. But there had been nothing sincere behind those actions, for he had done so to cajole me into compliance. This time, however, was real. No lies. No motives. No pretense. It was you.

My own lips took the place of my hands.

 

_Fin._


	3. the wick snaps

Time moves by so fast when we’re so absorbed in our own happiness.

You brought me back to your lush abode in the middle of the city. There were clothes to be bought, books to be read, you said, but first you showed me my bedroom, swimming in greens and blacks and whites. You did not know what my favourite colour was, but I loved anything and everything you gave to me. There were helpers in your home- helpers!- who fluffed my pillows and awaited for my every order at the ring of a bell. It felt so terribly funny that I, for once, did not have to fret over chores or what to eat for my next meal, but you assured me that I would enjoy this new chapter of my life. And how could I not, with you holding my hand every step of the way?

I spent hours rolled up in your library, my head on your lap, reading up volumes of yellowed pages with ancient runes and latin words that I could not even begin to comprehend. I would try to pronounce those words, the consonants rolling off my tongue as a vaudevillian mime in the opera, and you would correct me, your own voice warm honey that breathed life into those darn, dead languages as the Lord himself.

On days when you were busy with your work, I contented with roaming around your garden- Ma was never the gardening sort, she always thought the splash of colour frivolous and obscene in our home. But in here, between a glass conservatory where strange, tiny animals suspended in amber were kept and a lush, oak swing, it was as if you had recanted Eden into your very home. Anemones, roses, hyacinths- if I were an artist I would have spent more time sat at the swing with brushes and watercolours, but I was far less talented that I wished I could be, so I contented with watching the flies land on the sticky tongue of the sundews.

On nights when you were less busy, we found ourselves curled in front of the fireplace, its lazy glow illuminating your dead and long forgotten ancestors that shifted uneasily from one painting to another. You would dismiss the helpers from their night duties, and we’d spent the rest of the night sometimes cavorting to the phonographs; I would memorise the hollow in your collar bones with my lips, mapping red lines, and count the ridges of your ribs that rose between the valley of your chest. Your fingers, dexterous as they were with your wand, tinkled the ivory of my skin as a great pianist, drawing from the clutches of my throat a resplendent crescendo.

In those warm, intimate moments, when the world seemed to be only me and you, did I feel what normalcy was supposed to be. Sometimes, I catch myself missing you even before you had left in the morning. Other times, I felt a strange ache when I saw you talking to the young, sprightly butler, even though I know were informing him nothing but housekeeping matters. But most times, I glowed in your presence, as a candle left burning by the sheer heat of the sun. I had forgotten how cold it had been.

The anemones in your garden flushed a furious cerise in the summer, and slowly gave life to the winter, littering the balcony with remnants of its past self a few months ago. Life imitates nature. I should have known everything that came within my touch would wither and crack eventually.

One day, you returned home with a strange look on your face. You were unusually solemn and quiet as you ask for the help to leave the room before sitting me down with your hands- frigid and white as if you’d been dashing around all day without gloves- around my shoulder. I spied a shimmer on your left ring finger, and my heart hammers a staccato against my ribs like clockwork. No, I’m not ready for this, I tried to say, a blush on my cheeks, but my words died prematurely on my tongue as you took a long, deep breath.

You said something about familial commitments. A socialite. It would be held during the spring.

Something inside me snaps, and I pushed your arms off their comfortable place around my shoulder. Your eyes are wan and tired as you tried to explain. You hadn’t plan for this either, you protested, trying to knock some sense into me, but the inferno that rages within me refuses to be quelled by your persuasions. The blush turns from a bloom of happiness to a suffuse of unbridled anger.

There was a house in Rhode Island, by the sea. A housekeeper, and old man, keeps everything in order. I would be much better living there- far away from the city, far away from the smoke and noise and bad memories. We could still have everything we have right now, it doesn’t have to end, you keep repeating the last part as if it would make it a reality through sheer determination alone. It doesn’t have to end. I’ll visit once in a while under the pretense of a brother, they’ll never find out

A _brother_.

Your words rang around the empty drawing room, echoing, reverberating, until it was just the both of us, face to face. Funny, how we look so alike now...

My nails dug into the pads of my palm, leaving tiny, angry crescents. I need to get out of here, I said, my voice shaking as the flames tickled at my throat- my voice quivered, but it was not borne from fear. I knew that if I stayed here any longer, the fire that raged within me would consume me, consume all of us, until it ravaged this entire room, this house- this home- and I would once again be at the centre of the carnage. You called out for my name again I lingered for a moment in the doorway my shaking fingers twisting the doorknob, but it feels cheap. Dirty. Overused. Like a stage act performed one too many times.

The New York skyline greets me when I climbed my way to the rooftop- the evening sun scorches the horizon that quivers before its presence. But the air is cool, and I think it might be enough to put out the fire that threatens to engulf me, reducing me to mere ash. The wind. Wouldn’t it be nice to return to the wind? A steady fever burns in the pit of my stomach, and try as I might to resist, it was there to stay.

You caught up eventually, your hands grappling uselessly for mine, telling me to stop, to listen, but I don’t. Your words are a muffled mess as I looked up and thought of everything I could say- I don’t deserve this, after all this time. Maybe we’re not meant for each other. Maybe we’re only ever in love when we’re both wallowing in darkness. Maybe I never really needed you.

I tilted my head backwards, and let myself go. This time, I won’t let you catch me.

  
_Fin._

**Author's Note:**

> Constructive criticism is welcomed!


End file.
